I will survive without my smartphone
I did miss WhatsApp forwards through the day - jokes that have been doing the rounds since 2008, when I got my first BlackBerry.
Published: Fri 10 Jun 2016, 5:23 PM
First I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side." The opening lines of I Will Survive (I know Gloria Gaynor first sang it, and the great Aretha Franklin covered it, but I always associate it with Billie Jo Spear's rendition) were reverberating, buzzing, playing themselves out hoarse that morning two weeks ago when I left my smartphone at home. I was rushing to get out for a meeting and, as usual, running late - and I know it's a lame excuse, but I did manage to forget to grab smarty-pants on my way out.
I hailed a taxi and wanted to send a text message to the 'by appointment' person - just to reassure her I'm on my way. That's when I noticed my missing phone. I overturned all contents of my capacious bag onto the backseat in my search for the Holy Grail (I caught sight of the cabbie's face in the rear-view mirror; he looked, well, amused).
No, no, no, this couldn't be happening to me. I don't have my phone!
"I don't have my phone," I repeated, like a zombie, to nobody in particular but, obviously, the cabbie assumed I was addressing him.
"You didn't lose it, right?" he asked sensibly. "It must be at. home?"
"Yes," I said, miserably.
"Isn't that a good thing?"
"I don't know. How will I survive the whole day now?" I could have, of course, turned back but, by now, I was halfway to my destination, and there was someone waiting for me. someone I couldn't WhatsApp or text or Facebook (is she on my Facebook?) or call to tell I'd be late.
My contact, the one I had to meet, was waiting at assigned area. No sweat. But when I told her about my "crisis", she clutched harder on to her phone, afraid it might vanish into thin air. "Honestly," she said, "I wouldn't be able to survive a minute without mine."
Ten minutes into our meeting, I realised I was having a rather fruitful conversation with her. Normally, I'd check my phone for emails/messages every minute; now, I had no distractions.
By the time I reached work, I had a slight spring in my step. No major disasters seemed to have erupted while I'd been "out of the loop", and everything seemed peaceful. I sent out a common mail (from my desktop) to some important people in my life: "Forgot phone at home; incommunicado for the day." Someone even mailed back with an "Enjoy", followed by three exclamation marks.
I have to say the day unfolded like any other day and served to answer a question I have posed to myself often: how did everyone remain in touch so much more effectively (and meaningfully, may I add) in the olden days when there were no smartphones (or cellphones)?
When I returned home, it was just like getting reconnected to someone special. Like a tail-wagging doggie - only that my phone was exhaustedly blinking out its last rays of the LED notification light (the battery was on its last legs, thanks to the constant blinks - missed calls, email alerts, WhatsApp forwards, Facebook flags that lots of people had liked a post and so on). I picked it up fondly, mouthed a "sorry for having left you behind" and plugged it in to charge.
A spot of soul-searching was in order. It hadn't really been an apocalyptic watershed in my life, my not having a smartphone the whole day. I did survive. In fact, I quite liked the no-strings-attached state, and everything that was "seriously" important was somehow getting communicated to me via other means (the landline, for instance. or my desktop email). I was chuffed no end I had not one, not two, or even three, but SEVEN missed calls from a mutual fund manager who I have been trying to avoid for the last couple of years (he probably really needed to step on the gas that day).
Having said all this, I did miss WhatsApp forwards through the day - jokes that have been doing the rounds since 2008, when I got my first BlackBerry (back then, I only used BBM). But since I know them so well by now, I only had to replay a select few in my head to invoke the LOLs.
- sushmita@khaleejtimes.com
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